| Summary: |
This collection of articles compares the problems and issues facing indigenous nations within the United States and Canada and examines forms of native resistance. Glenn T. Morris and M. Annette Jaimes summarize the evolution of the "legal status" of indigenous nations under U.S. law and examine how U.S. legal definitions undermine indigenous sovereignty and allow massive expropriations of Indian lands. This legal and conceptual groundwork is drawn upon by Ward Churchill, Winona LaDuke, Bernard Nietschmann, and William LaBon in case studies of the Black Hills land claim by the Lakota Nation (Western Sioux), the White Earth Anishinabe (Chippewa) land claim in Minnesota, the nuclearization of the Western Shoshone Nation in the Great Basin region, and the "Go Road" Supreme Court decision allowing a logging access road through traditional Yurok, Karok, and Tolawa religious sites on federal land. Jim Vander Wall describes the current situation of Leonard Peltier, an indigenous activist imprisoned by the U.S. government. Sharon H. Venne examines indigenous status under Canadian law. Three other articles on Canada natives (by Jim Harding, staff of the Dam the Dams Project, and Ward Churchill) describe the effects of (1) uranium mining in northern Saskatchewan (2) hydroelectric projects in northern Canada, and (3) colonial exploitation of the Lubicon Lake Cree. Dalee Sambo reports on critical issues in the Arctic, as seen by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. This publication also contains a poem by Bobby Gene Garcia, a statement by John Trudell at the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, a map of indigenous North America, and profiles of contributors. This collection of articles forms the second of two volumes designed to impart to readers some sense of the crucial importance of what is and will be happening to the indigenous peoples of North America. "The Present and Future Status of American Indian Nations," by Robert T. Coulter argues from the perspectives of ideology, power, law, and human rights that the political existence of Native American nations and their governments, in relation to the United States and other governments, is legally and practically tenuous. "Who Will Govern Indian Country?" By Rudolph C. Ryser examines theoretical and practical jurisdictional problems related to the existence of independent sovereign states within another sovereignty and suggests that intergovernmental agreements recognizing tribal governments as the sole governing authority on reservations would eliminate current jurisdictional chaos. "The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism," by Ward Churchill and Winona LaDuke discusses the "new colonialism" (the expendable relationship of indigenous peoples to multinational resource-extraction corporations); and suggests that tribes must choose between Third World "development" and a Fourth World strategy of disengagement. The remaining articles address more specific issues and events such as the Pit River Indian land claim dispute, the Western Shoshone landrights struggle, the "Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute" and related inter-tribal conflicts, the Garrison Dam related land dispute, and the process of implementing Indian Treaty Fishing Rights. |
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